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[ 'BEHIND THE CANDELABRA' ]

Michael Douglas, right, plays Liberace and Matt Damon is Scott Thorson in "Behind the Candelabra," which tells the strange story of Thorson's life before and after his relationship with Liberace.
(CLAUDETTE BARIUS | HBO)

By DAVID SEGALTHE NEW YORK TIMES

Published: Tuesday, May 21, 2013 at 8:20 p.m.

Last Modified: Tuesday, May 21, 2013 at 8:20 p.m.

RENO, Nev. | Soon after moving into Liberace's gaudy Las Vegas mansion in 1977, Scott Thorson, then a teenage hunk in the foster care system, learned the jewel-smitten showman could love just as extravagantly as he decorated.

When the pair eventually became a couple, Liberace, who was 40 years older, couldn't bear to let Thorson out of his sight.

"We were at a hotel in Florida, and Liberace had the manager give us another suite, with windows that faced the beach," said Thorson, now 54. "He knew I'd be near the water and he wanted to be able to look at me."

Liberace even wanted Thorson nearby when he worked. So for years, Thorson would don a chauffeur's costume covered in rhinestones and drive "Mr. Showmanship" on stage in a bejeweled Rolls-Royce. Thorson would put the car in park, then open the door for Liberace, who would emerge in a fur coat with a 16-foot train.

If you missed this routine, which ran for years at the Las Vegas Hilton, you can catch a re-enactment in an upcoming HBO movie, "Behind the Candelabra," which is based on Thorson's autobiography of the same name and stars Matt Damon as Thorson and Michael Douglas as Liberace.

One person who might miss the movie's debut, on Sunday, is Scott Thorson. He is an inmate at the Washoe County jail here, and while the place has its share of amenities, HBO isn't one of them.

Thorson has been held here since February, when he was charged with burglary and identity theft, after buying about $1,300 worth of computer and cellphone merchandise using a credit card and license that weren't his. He was arrested at the Ponderosa Hotel, where he and a man he had just met rented a room for $33.90 a night.

On a recent Friday morning at the jail, Thorson was sitting in a small room of white cinder blocks.

"This experience has scared me straight," he said. "There comes a time when you've got to take responsibility. You've got to stop lying and face your mistakes."

It's hard to connect this worn and anxious man in a blue prison shirt to the beefcake grinning in photographs in the late 1970s. Time, an on-and-off meth addiction, several stints in prison and what he describes as Stage 3 colon cancer have taken their toll.

Another reason he looks different: The chin implant is gone. Thorson had it removed in an attempt to reverse one of the creepier episodes in the history of plastic surgery. Early in their relationship, Liberace plucked an oil painting of himself from a room in his Las Vegas mansion and asked a visiting doctor to reshape Thorson's face to look like Liberace's as a young man.

With sex and fatherhood disturbingly twined, Thorson wound up with a new chin, a nose job and enhanced cheekbones.

"I was 17 years old," he said. "Liberace had taken me out of a situation with a father who was very abusive, a mother who was mentally ill. I did everything I possibly could to please this man."

The two went on shopping sprees, traveled first class and spent a lot of quality time with Liberace's Shar-Peis. They entertained celebrities like Debbie Reynolds and Michael Jackson.

But it all ended abruptly in 1982. That year, Liberace had Thorson ejected from his penthouse in Los Angeles. It was a breakup caused, in part, by Thorson's drug habit, which he says he developed trying to slim down, at Liberace's urging, on what was called the "Hollywood diet," a cocktail of doctor-prescribed drugs that included pharmaceutical cocaine.

Thorson later sued for $113 million in palimony, ultimately losing a highly public battle. He settled in 1986 for $95,000, according to reports at the time.

There was a deathbed reconciliation before Liberace died of a disease caused by AIDS in 1987. And that is where the book version of "Behind the Candelabra" ends.

But Thorson's life went on, and as he explained in a series of interviews, many of the events that followed are as strange as the ones that came before.

AFTER LIBERACE

The trick is separating the strange from the unbelievable.

"His approach to communicating with people is always to play it in a manner that reflects best on him," said Oliver Mading, the man Thorson calls his adoptive father as well as his manager. Sitting nearby was Mading's stepson, Tony Pelicone, who met Thorson through a mutual friend.

At best, these men sounded deeply ambivalent about being enmeshed in Thorson's life.

"He's not a bad person," said Pelicone. "He's just twisted and kind of cutthroat."

Mading: "He'd sell his mother -- "

"Then he gives you that smile," said Pelicone, interrupting.

A few weeks ago, he pleaded guilty and asked to enter a rehabilitation program. He could face as little as probation with a suspended prison sentence to two to 30 years and combined fines of up to $110,000.

ENTER EDDIE NASH

What's indisputable is that Scott Thorson is no longer named Scott Thorson. He is now Jess Marlow, a change Thorson says occurred when he entered the federal witness protection program as the star witness in the 1989 prosecution of an infamous Los Angeles character named Eddie Nash.

Nash shows up in the book and movie as Mr. Y., described as a drug dealer with ties to organized crime who made headlines for allegedly ordering the Wonderland murders, a grisly quadruple homicide that took place two days after Nash's home was robbed in 1981. (The crime is named for 8763 Wonderland Ave., where the killings took place.)

Thorson says Nash became a drug source for him in the early 1980s and that he later became a partner in Nash's club business. At some point, the two fell out and, by 1988, Thorson was reportedly in a Los Angeles jail for an assortment of charges. There, he says, he was offered leniency by the district attorney's office in exchange for testifying that he happened to be at Nash's home when thugs pummeled porn star John Holmes, who was tied to the robbery. Nash later struck a plea bargain in which he was sentenced to 37 months in prison for racketeering.

Now, in his early 80s, Nash is a free man. And he would like to make it clear that he and Thorson were never partners.

"No, no, he worked for me," Nash said on the telephone. "When Liberace dumped him, he had nothing. He was on the streets. So I took him in, and he worked at the house. He was good for cleaning."

Thorson claims that after the trial, marshals in the federal witness protection program moved him to Florida and gave him a new name. "They had to keep me safe because there was a contract placed on my life by Eddie Nash," he said.

But the story sounds highly improbable to Bill Keefer, a former federal marshal in the witness protection program. He has doubts because of where Thorson eventually landed: at a Christian-based homeless shelter in Tallahassee, called the Haven of Rest.

"How much protection could the marshals provide a guy at a homeless shelter?" Keefer asked.

At the Haven of Rest, Thorson found religion. And instead of striving for invisibility, he shared his life story in front of church congregations.

"He would share his testimony about his life with Liberace," said Danny Heaberlin, who ran Haven of Rest at the time.

Thorson was unable to stay on the side of the angels for long. After three years at the Haven of Rest, he says, he started using drugs again, and in 1991, was shot in a room at a hotel in Jacksonville. Local reports described the crime as a robbery committed by a crack dealer.

"They thought he was going to die," Heaberlin said, "but he kept living and living."

NEXT STOP

While he was recovering, a life-changing event occurred: A woman from Maine named Georgianna Morrill came to visit.

"I read 'Behind the Candelabra,' and I saw the photo on the back of the book and I heard the Lord tell me to pray for this guy," Morrill said.

She found Thorson through a Pentecostal friend and soon after the two met, she invited him to live with her in a tiny two-story red house in Falmouth, Maine.

Thorson accepted. He stayed for the next 12 years.

It was the second time he found refuge in someone else's life, but Falmouth was a long way from Vegas, and Morrill was no Liberace. There were periods of domestic calm, but Morrill wanted to get married.

Thorson's homosexuality wasn't the only impediment to marriage. He drank a lot, and when he did he would sometimes "get stupid," in Morrill's words, prompting her to call the police.

Morrill speaks with a note of nostalgia about those strife-ridden years. It's a note you won't hear when you discuss the subject with Thorson.

"Horrible!" he said of his Maine phase. "It was so boring."

Thorson moved to Palm Springs, where he would be arrested a handful of times. Early in this era, he met Tony Pelicone.

"I recently learned that he came by our house to meet someone I was dating," Pelicone said. "Later his house burned and nobody was there to pick him up. So I did, thinking he'd stay for a few days. That turned into 10 years."

Initially, Pelicone was thrilled to meet Liberace's ex, and he introduced Thorson to his mother and stepfather, Oliver Mading.

Mading says he negotiated the "Behind the Candelabra" movie deal with producer Jerry Weintraub, while Thorson was in prison on drug charges. After his release, Thorson spent his cut of the movie earnings -- just under $100,000 -- in about two months, mostly on cars and jewelry.

Thorson says he's now penniless because of outlays for cancer treatment. The truth is almost beside the point. His only real assets today are the intangibles that Liberace bequeathed him, most notably, a peculiar place in showbiz history.

"There's always been a love-hate relationship," Thorson said about Liberace. "At that time, I was so honored to be in his presence. And I didn't want to go back to my lifestyle in the foster homes, which was pure hell."

Their years together scarred him, he says, and partially explain the troubles that followed. But those years were also the happiest of his life. He had a tribute to Liberace tattooed on his forearm. He reveals an inky cluster of curlicued letters and symbols. In the middle is Liberace's name, surrounded by floating musical notes, plus a yellow rose.

"His favorite flower," Thorson said matter-of-factly.

This story appeared in print on page B7

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